Rena Finder has seen Steven Spielberg's 1993 film "Schindler's List" some 100 times in her 87 years. Each time, she says, is a reminder of her own survival story.

Finder, a part-time resident of Delray Beach, is one of the youngest to survive the Holocaust by working in Oskar Schindler's factory. A member of the Nazi party, Schindler is credited with the rescue of more than 1,000 Jews, sparing them the horrors and brutality of conventional camp life.

"Being with him saved us from starvation, from torture, from murder, from freezing," Finder said. "He wanted to save us. He did everything he could. Nobody wanted to do that."

Finder will speak about her experiences as a survivor on Schindler's List during a presentation Wednesday at Chabad of Boca Raton.

"I am speaking because I am an eyewitness, and there are fewer and fewer of us left," Finder said. "A day doesn't go by that I don't hear from somebody that another one of the survivors is gone."

Rena Finder,87, of Delray Beach, is a survivor of Oskar Schindler's list. She will share her story at Chabad of Boca Raton on March 9.

(Carline Jean/Sun Sentinel)

In South Florida, there are an estimated 14,000 Holocaust survivors, according to the Holocaust Documentation & Education Center in Hollywood; a 2005 report showed 5,000 live in Palm Beach County.

"However morbid this may sound, it's saddening that my 3-month-old son will probably never hear a Holocaust survivor's story firsthand, which is why it's so special and important for them to be sharing their stories, especially with the younger generation," said Rabbi Arele Gopin, Chabad's program director.

And he said Finder's story is especially unique.

Carline Jean/Sun Sentinel

Rena Finder,87, of Delray Beach, is seen in a picture with director Steven Spielberg, who made the movie "Schindler's List." Finder is a survivor of Oskar Schindler's list. She will share her story at Chabad of Boca Raton on March 9.

Rena Finder,87, of Delray Beach, is seen in a picture with director Steven Spielberg, who made the movie "Schindler's List." Finder is a survivor of Oskar Schindler's list. She will share her story at Chabad of Boca Raton on March 9. (Carline Jean/Sun Sentinel)

Finder was born in 1929 in Krakow, Poland, to a well-to-do family. An only child, she lived with her parents in a brand-new apartment next to Wawel Royal Castle, she said. Her mother was a homemaker. Her father, a sales manager, traveled a lot.

A good student in school, Finder often was chosen for parts in the school's play. On Sundays, her father would take her to soccer games, or her aunt and uncle would take her to see children's plays or movies.

In September 1939, everything changed. The Nazis invaded Krakow, and as a young girl, Finder witnessed Jews being tortured and shot in the streets, she said.

Forced to leave their home, the family moved into the ghetto. There her father was arrested and later killed at the death camp Auschwitz.

Finder and her mother worked in a printing shop in the ghetto and then in the concentration camp Plaszow, where the camp's leader would shoot people. One day, Finder and her mother were put on a list to work in Schindler's factory.

"It was like going from hell to heaven," she said. "I expected [Schindler] to grow wings. He treated us like human beings."

At the factory, Finder made shells for ammunition. The workers were given coffee and fed bread and soup with pieces of meat and potato — not the sawdust and potato peels often given to prisoners at concentration camps, she said.

"You didn't have to dread every day you were going to be killed because you knew Oskar Schindler was there, and he was going to protect you," Finder said.

In fall 1944, the factory closed. Finder and other workers were loaded into cars and taken to Auschwitz, she recalled.

"We were very thirsty, and it was late," she said of her arrival at the camp. "It started snowing, so we tried to catch some snowflakes, then we realized those weren't snowflakes, they were ashes."

There was a terrible stench in the air that Finder later learned was burning flesh. "There are no words to describe Auschwitz," she said. "If you were not there, you can't even imagine."

Finder spent 3.5 weeks moving mud around at the camp until finally a man came on Schindler's behalf and brought the workers to Schindler's new factory in Czechoslovakia.

"The final seven months of the war — when hundreds and thousands of Jewish men and women and children were sent on death marches in the worst winter of the 20th century, and they were murdered — we were under the care of Schindler," Finder said. "I remember when the train doors opened and he was standing in the station — he was wearing a feather in his hat — and it was like God came down to take care of us. And he said, 'Well, you are finally here.'"

Those last months of the war, Finder worked in the factory, though, she said, the machines were broken, so she never made anything viable. Schindler would instead buy the things that the workers were supposed to be making.

On May 9, 1945, Russians liberated the factory. Finder and her mother went back to Poland for about four months and realized no one from her mother's family had survived. "Poland was like walking in a cemetery," she said. "I felt the ground was soaked in blood."

They left and went to a displaced persons camp in Austria, where Finder married in 1946. Together they moved to the United States in 1948 and got jobs right away. "All we wanted was a normal life," she said.

The couple went on to have three daughters, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren — most of whom, Finder said, have seen the movie "Schindler's List."

The film depicts how Schindler gradually became concerned for his Jewish workforce after witnessing their persecution by the Nazis. It won seven Oscars, with an additional 69 awards won and 33 nominations.

When the movie came out in 1993, Finder said, it was as if a wall came down. "All of a sudden it was OK to say I'm a survivor, and I survived on Schindler's list," Finder said. "I feel the movie is very accurate — as accurate as you can possibly make it. The movie became a teaching tool."

Finder has spent the last three decades sharing her story at schools in Massachusetts, where she lives part-time. In 2014, she met Spielberg at the United Nations headquarters in New York City.

"I want people to be kind to each other because the worst thing you can do is hate," she said. "It's so much easier to be kind."

Rena Finder will speak at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Chabad of Boca Raton at 17950 Military Trail. Tickets cost $10 in advance and $18 at the door. Admission for students and children is free. To reserve a spot, call 561-994-6257 or visit ChabadBoca.com/Schindler.